Blowtorch: Robert Komer and the making of Vietnam pacification policy

Parameters, Autumn, 2005 by Frank L. Jones

McNamara's Assistance

In September, Komer and McNaughton talked McNamara into making an official proposal to the President that would place pacification under military leadership. The third option was strengthened and circulated as a McNamara proposal to the other agencies for concurrence. (38) It also was discussed with Johnson, who believed that Komer and McNamara were right. CIA, USAID, and State condemned the proposal. Komer sent a memorandum to McNamara as a formal response extolling the concept. The negative civilian reaction led Johnson to hold off implementing the proposal until the right psychological moment. The civilian agencies did not want their personnel in the field under military control. (39)

Meanwhile, Johnson and Walt Rostow, who had been appointed National Security Adviser on 1 April, were interested in keeping the pressure on the South Vietnamese government to play a larger role in pacification. Rostow recommended a conference in October, this time in Manila, inviting South Vietnam as well as other troop-providing allies. Although the primary thrust of the conference was peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese, Rostow, supporting Komer's view of the military running pacification, also wanted a renewed commitment by Saigon, backed by the allies, on pacification and related issues such as economic development, education, health, and agriculture. (40)

Komer saw the planning for the Manila conference as an opportunity to surface his argument in a memorandum to the President that the US military must assume responsibility for pacification management, since local security was critical and only the ARVN and US military could provide this essential ingredient. Further, because the military had the organization, personnel, engineering resources, and logistical capability, it had to be involved in support of pacification. (41) The President was swayed by Komer's arguments. He called McNamara and stated, "I feel strongly that it [pacification] ought to go to the military," (42) but delayed making a final decision until McNamara's party, which consisted of Komer and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach, met with Lodge in Saigon in early October to discuss this new approach. (43)

Komer already had secured powerful allies. McNamara and Rostow were supportive, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that transferring pacification management to Westmoreland was likely the best approach; they were not optimistic that the creation of an effective civilian organization could ever occur and certainly not speedily. (44) The civilian agencies realized that the burden was on them to offer a better alternative and that Komer and McNamara had already gotten to Johnson and sold him on the thesis that pacification was not working and that only the military could do what was needed. Rusk objected strenuously, but his views did not win over the President. The CIA realized that the probability of changing the President's mind was slight, so it opted to attack any recommendations whereby it would lose control of its programs in-country. (45)